Voters oppose Obama' gun restrictions but strongly favor gun control

Demonstrating a glaring contradiction, Michigan voters remain leery of President Obama’s gun control plan but they strongly support key aspects of that plan, including universal background checks and bans on high-capacity ammunition clips and assault weapons, according to a new poll.

A telephone survey conducted by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA found that Michigan, a state with a high percentage of gun owners, favors background checks at gun shows by an 86-12 percent margin. An astounding 77 percent said they ” strongly favor” closing the gun show loophole, which allows for 40 percent of firearms sales to take place without a criminal background check of the purchaser.

Gun owners, tea party members and National Rifle Association members also expressed overwhelming support.

EPIC-MRA pollster Bernie Porn said he was not surprised by the strong feelings displayed by participants in the Feb. 5-10 statewide poll.

“In all the years we’ve done polling, the two issues that strike me as those where get a lot of phone calls is helmets for motorcyclists and … on gun issues we get a lot of calls from people saying basically, ‘You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. These are passionate issues – on both sides.”

On perhaps the most controversial gun issue, renewal of the 1994 assault weapons ban, the passions are unmistakable.

On that poll question, a 54-43 percent margin favored a ban, and 85 percent of voters – 47 percent for, 38 percent against – said they strongly favor or oppose such a measure. Gun owners and gun-rights advocates, who insist that assault weapons are targeted based on their looks not their lethality, were over overwhelmingly opposed to a ban.

But within Republican ranks, EPIC-MRA found a significant split along gender lines – 20 percent of GOP men favored the end to assault weapon sales while 44 percent of GOP women were supportive.

The restriction on ammunition clips – limiting magazines to 10 bullets – also enjoys widespread support, by a 58-38 percent tally in the poll. Independent voters supported the ban on high-capacity clips by 25-point margin while Democrats and Republicans are sharply divided.

Tea party and NRA members are overwhelmingly opposed but gun owners support the limitations, 50-46 percent.

While those three provisions are the cornerstone of Obama’s plan, an initial question in the survey about support for the president’s proposals found that nearly half of voters recoiled from any changes in gun laws with the Obama label. With respondents split along party lines, 44 percent said they oppose the president’s plan and 42 percent favored it. In the tri-county area, supporters were a plurality, 48-39 percent.

“(Statewide) they show support for the components of the plan but they oppose the ‘Obama proposals’ because they disapprove of him,” Porn said.

Similar results have been found in national polls but the substantial support for individual provisions is significant in Michigan because 48 percent of the state’s households have a gun as compared to 33 percent nationwide.

On other issues, the poll found:

• Voters narrowly oppose the state’s new right-to-work law by a 50-45 percent edge. In the tri-county area, the margin is 58-39 percent, which is similar to the poll results for independent voters.

• A solid plurality, 46-35 percent, supports reforms to the process of redrawing legislative districts for Congress and the Legislature. Surprisingly, though GOP lawmakers controlled the last round of redistricting process, Republican voters, by a by a healthy margin of 52-29 percent, like the idea of creating an independent body that would draw nonpartisan, competitive districts.

• Support for the various factions known as the tea party is falling, with a 42-33 percent plurality expressing opposition to the groups’ staunchly conservative agenda. Nearly four in 10 respondents said they strongly oppose the tea party movement.

• In a result that surprised Porn, the Pentagon policy allowing women to serve in combat was widely embraced by poll respondents, 68-30 percent. A majority strongly favored the decision to lift the Defense Department ban. But GOP men were more ambivalent, holding down the poll question’s majority by backing the plan with just 51-48 percent edge.